Metaphor: ReFantazio

The game comes from Studio Zero. Katsura Hashino, director of Persona 3, 4 and 5, founded it inside Atlus after leaving the series once the fifth game was done. The project was shown in December 2016 under the working title Project Re:Fantasy and shipped almost eight years later.

Composer Shoji Meguro brought in Keisuke Honryo, chief priest of a Buddhist temple, to sing. His vocals mix Esperanto with the language of the game's world, delivered at an almost rap-like tempo. The monsters, which the game calls "Humans", were designed with Hieronymus Bosch in mind.

The game sold a million copies on launch day, faster than any other Atlus game. One reviewer criticized the dungeons as repetitive, and at launch the game drew complaints about technical problems. Critics give it 92 on Metacritic, and players leave 89% positive out of 25,740 reviews. In our Recommended Score it ranks 102 of 4,736 games.

Liked it? Try Persona 5 Royal, the expanded edition of Hashino's last game in the series, and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, an RPG inspired by Final Fantasy and Persona, where pressing a button at the right moment matters in turn-based fights.